In a victory for trans youth and their families, a federal judge blocked the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) from accessing private medical records of kids who sought gender-affirming care at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP).

In June, the DOJ sent subpoenas to 20 medical providers who offer gender-affirming care to trans youth. Under the pretense of investigating healthcare fraud, the DOJ demanded patients’ Social Security numbers, emails, home addresses, and information about the care they received.

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Additionally, the DOJ sought information about the providers’ employees and their correspondence with pharmaceutical manufacturers, marketing departments, and sales representatives, as well as other sensitive information dating back to January 2020.

CHOP sued to protect its patients, and U.S. District Court Judge Mark A. Kearney sided with the hospital.

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Kearney wrote that “even if this private information could be relevant, the heightened privacy interests of children and their families substantially outweighs the Department’s need to know” it.

The judge acknowledged that CHOP had agreed to produce certain categories of records in response to the subpoena but drew the line at anything that sacrificed patient privacy.

“The records sought here fall at the highest end of the intimate and personal spectrum,” Kearney wrote. “They contain comprehensive psychosocial evaluations and deeply personal disclosures by children about their bodies, sexuality, trauma, family dynamics, self-harm, mental-health history, and cognitive and emotional functioning. They also include the diagnoses, clinical reasoning, and informed-consent discussions underlying treatment decisions.”

“This level of detail places the information among the most personal and sensitive a medical provider can hold and squarely within the class of intimate material our Court of Appeals has long regarded as warranting the strongest constitutional protection.”

The tone of the ruling made it clear how outlandish the judge found it that the DOJ “seeks to pair these disclosures with the names, dates of birth, addresses, and social security numbers of the children involved.”

He continued, “Linking such intimate material to identified children—across assessments, diagnoses, psychosocial histories, and consent discussions—invokes the strongest privacy protections…”

He also wrote that the court is “not persuaded in the least” by the DOJ’s rationale for needing the information.

Mimi McKenzie, legal director at the Philadelphia-based Public Interest Law Center, called the ruling “a complete rebuke” to the DOJ. McKenzie worked with five parents of trans kids to file a motion against the DOJ’s demands, but Kearney’s ruling has now made their motion unnecessary.

“The court recognized that the Department of Justice is using its subpoena power not as a tool for legitimate inquiry, but as a tool for intrusion, and it’s not allowing that,“ McKenzie said in a statement. ”This is an important victory. Under this court’s ruling their privacy is protected, their medical records are not going to be turned over, and this court is just not going to condone this type of government overreach.”

CHOP’s Gender and Sexuality Development Program was created in 2014 and has served hundreds of families. It is one of the largest clinics in the country serving trans and nonbinary kids.

Last month, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro (D) submitted a friend of the court filing in support of CHOP, saying that complying with the DOJ’s attempts to obtain private information would erode “trust between doctors and patients,” violate his state’s right to regulate healthcare, and achieve another step in the administration’s quest to end gender-affirming care for trans youth despite there being no federal law against it.

While no federal law bans gender-affirming care, the current administration has sought to eradicate the practice through a January executive order (that has since been blocked by several courts). The order instructed the DOJ to extend the time that patients and parents can sue gender-affirming care doctors and to use laws against false advertising to prosecute any entity that may be misleading the public about the long-term effects of gender-affirming care.

In April, Attorney General Pam Bondi issued a memo to DOJ employees, telling them to investigate and prosecute cases of minors accessing gender-affirming care as female genital mutilation, even though hospitals don’t conduct such female genital surgeries. The memo threatened to jail doctors for 10 years if they provide gender-affirming care to young people.

Gender-affirming care is supported by all major medical associations in the U.S., including the American Medical Association, the Endocrine Society, and the American Academy of Pediatrics, as safe and life-saving for young people with gender dysphoria. A recent study following young trans patients for a decade found that 97% of trans youth don’t regret transitioning.

In September, federal Judge Myong J. Joun, an appointee of former President Joe Biden, blocked a similar DOJ subpoena targeting the Boston Children’s Hospital (BCH). Joun’s ruling accused the DOJ of going on a “bad faith” “fishing expedition” to end gender-affirming care.

The DOJ said that its subpoenas seek to prevent healthcare fraud and “off-label” use of puberty blockers and hormones to treat youth gender dysphoria, beyond the “on-label” uses approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. The blockers and hormone treatments have been used safely on children for decades to treat precocious puberty and certain cancers, and off-label uses of these drugs for trans individuals has also occurred safely for decades without any additional federal government oversight.

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